LYNN — Local community members and health-care providers gathered at North Shore Community College on Tuesday to voice their concerns about maternal health care in the region.
The event is part of a series of listening sessions focused on maternal health with members of Gov. Maura Healey’s administration.
Tuesday’s event was attended by Massachusetts Public Health Commissioner Robbie Goldstein, who said that the administration is committed to addressing the maternal-health crisis in the Commonwealth.
He said that members of the administration will use what they hear at events like Tuesday’s as part of their recommendations when creating future policies and approaches.
“This is a hard problem,” Goldstein said. “I think we can do something really hard here, and we can do it together.”
Goldstein, who was appointed to his role in April, noted that the Healey administration is committed to tackling issues related to health care in general in Massachusetts.
“We are taking a new approach now and we are pushing forward,” he added.
Several community members spoke at the event to advocate for better maternity care in the region, especially in the wake of the North Shore Birth Center’s closure in 2022.
Katherine Rushfirth, a certified nurse midwife and policy director at Neighborhood Birth Center, described increased support for midwifery care as a key part of any state efforts to improve maternal health care.
Rushfirth, who recently hosted a midwife advocacy day at the Statehouse, spoke about her own experience receiving maternal health care in the area. She said more work needs to be done to support midwifery care, something she said is often treated as an “afterthought.”
“I, as a Lynn mom, did not have access to the care I wanted,” Rushfirth said. “Massachusetts‘ maternal-health crisis is appalling… I want to be specific and clear that midwifery needs to be at the center of any state action.”
Rushfirth noted how important it is that structural changes are made in the state’s health-care industry to incentivize the use of midwifery care as part of the state’s maternal-health options.
“We have the staff, we have the workers, the economics are just not lining up,” she said.
Several local health-care leaders spoke at the event, including caregivers from Lynn Community Health Center like Physician Assistant Nicole McKenzie, who said that the lack of specialized maternal care in the area has forced many in Lynn to seek care in emergency rooms and urgent-care centers like LCHC.
State Rep. Peter Capano, whose district includes parts of Lynn, said that the lack of options for maternal care in the area, and in Lynn in particular, is part of a larger issue: the lack of access to health care across the board.
“There’s a pattern here in Lynn,” Capano said. “We had 80,000 people here 30 years ago and had two fully functioning hospitals. Now, we have 100,000 people without any hospitals.”
